In 1986, incumbent Democratic Texas governor Mark White was pulling even in the polls with Republican challenger Bill Clements when in the final days of the election Clements’s campaign manager claimed to have found a listening device in his office. The Republicans claimed the Democrats planted it, the Democrats insisted that it was a Republican ploy, and in the bogus controversy that followed, all the issues were forgotten and Clements won.

Need it be said that Clements’s campaign manager was Karl Rove? That’s one of the more illuminating details in Joseph Mealey & Michael Paradies Shoob’s résumé of the shadowy genius behind the Republican takeover of the country, and it should evoke a sense of déjà vu and dread as we near November 2. From his stabbing a trusting pal in the back to become head of the College Republicans in 1973 to his smear campaigns against Ann Richards, John McCain, Max Cleland (though not brought up in the film, the swiftboat ads are second nature to him), and many others, Rove stops at nothing to win. Nothing new there, and the filmmakers, adapting the book by James C. Moore and Wayne Slater (who take up more than their share of screen time), fail to dig very deep or connect many dots. Instead, they insert at the end a teary tribute to one of the fallen in the Iraq war. Heart-rending, to be sure, and multiplied now more than a thousand-fold, but so shamelessly manipulative you’d think it had been thought up by Karl Rove himself. (80 minutes)